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Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Extend and read Windows Update Log

Sometimes something went wrong during Windows Updates. So it would be helpful to know what's going wrong. Therefore we have the Windows Update Log. But where is it, how to read and how to extend to get even more out of it.

Beware - in Windows 10 the Windows Update logfile is by default in ETL format!

This is an internal logging format from Microsoft. To "translate" it in to human readable format you need to to convert it. This is fortunatelly very simple.1. Open Powershell2. Type in: Get-WindowsUpdateLog (and press Enter)3. Last line will tell you where the WindowsUpdate.log file was written.

How to enable extended logging

Microsoft Product Support Services may ask you to turn on verbose logging. To turn on verbose logging, add the following registry key with two values: